The night's carnage left some 3,000 African Americans dead and over 600 successful businesses lost. Among these were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half dozen private airplanes and even a bus system. As could have been expected, the impetus behind it all was the infamous Ku Klux Klan, working in consort with ranking city officials and many other sympathizers.
In their self-published book, BLACK WALLSTREET: A Lost Dream and its companion video documentary, BLACK WALLSTREET: A BLACK Holocaust in America! the authors have chronicled for the very first time in the words of area historians and elderly survivors what really happened there on that fateful summer day in 1921 and why it happened. Wallace similarly explained why this bloody event from the turn of the century seems to have had a recurring affect that is being felt in predominately BLACK neighborhoods even to this day."
http://www.globalblacknews.com/BlackWallstreet.html
Why is it important to bring this negative past up, I hear you say? Well, because this sort of shameful American history is part of what ails Black America today, and needs to be acknowledged and dealt with by apologies and any other fitting means. Ignoring the shameful past of America will never succeed to keep it hidden, as it will continue to rear its ugly head time and again. The other use of acknowledging America's ugly past is the fact that it serves to demonstrate to African Americans and indeed to Africans all over some of the reasons that hold African progress back in the USA. "And what is the purpose of this?" again I hear you say. Well, as long as there are clear reasons for what ails Africans in America, we are able to understand that there are very real, very solid outside factors that have served and continue to serve to contribute to this, and it is necessary to understand that there is nothing so inherently wrong with our community to stop us succeeding. It is a reminder that we have to somehow find a way to circumvent and mitigate these external factors, and reach into our inner selves for inner strength, and if indeed there could exist a black wall street during Jim Crow, imagine what we can re-create with the resources and the advances made in legislation to outlaw practices that have existed in the past to legally hinder black progress – (I point out specifically the legal advances made not to be confused with a suggestion that there doesn't still exist the many various racist hindrances of access to education, opportunity, economic advantage and so forth). Remembering Black Wall Street, furthermore, not only serves to recall the morbidity of this tragedy, but rather, it serves to remind and make aware to those that weren't already, that we as a people come from greatness, and if we can recreate greatness in the most unfavorable of circumstances such as Jim Crow, then we certainly can recreate greatness given today's slightly improved circumstances. I truly believe that there is a strong element of belief in the inherent inferiority of blacks among not just whites but among some blacks as well, and it is of utmost importance to counter this, because if blacks do not believe that we are more than equal in ability and resilience and resourcefulness etc, then what hope is there for that kid who's lagging behind in sch, with all these negative stereotypes around, backed by statistics to boot. However, knowing and believing in ourselves will serve to provide hope and a true belief that those bad grades can be turned around, that single family household you come from is not a sentence to a life of poverty, because you, me and we are all capable of turning all of these around. Because we have done it before in the worst of circumstances, and continue to do so... It is to understand that if the extremely legalized racist environments of yesteryear going as far back as the 1800s and beyond could bring forth the likes of Fredrick Douglas, Marcus Garvey, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Josephine Baker, Berry Gordy, Oprah, Russell Simmons and on and on the list goes... Then surely a child in the extremely challenging environment that is the hood can, should and will overcome and can be all they should be. I am not interested in the negative history, purely for the sake of its negativity, but more so as a reminder of our undying and superior resilience, and ability in the face of adversity, and to remind us as well as the most important among us - our young men and women, and boys and girls, that the challenges we face today while heavy, are nothing compared to the challenges faced by our great of yesteryear, and therefore should not and cannot hinder our progress
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